


i didn't have it in myself to go with grace

by heartsoftheocean



Category: Titanic (1997)
Genre: Anyways, F/M, Oneshot, and also just the pain that has accumulated over the many months in quarantine, excessive angst and rambling, lots of internal monologue to avoid writing dialogue, this fic is based on the song my tears ricochet by taylor swift, this is the first fic im posting here so pls be nice, until i can prove that i know how to actually write still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27267952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsoftheocean/pseuds/heartsoftheocean
Summary: (and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves) cal's life after the sinking. or lack thereof. a oneshot.
Relationships: Rose DeWitt Bukater/Caledon Hockley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	i didn't have it in myself to go with grace

After the RMS Titanic sank, Cal went home. 

He didn’t linger behind or try to contact a ghost that didn’t want to be found. He simply got on the first train to Pittsburgh from New York City. And he went home. 

Not like it helped to run. Because it didn’t. The ghost caught up to haunt him eventually, visiting him in dreams that turned his throat red and raw from screaming, leaving his skin covered in a heavy, bitter sweat. 

Before? He hadn’t dreamed in years. 

And soon, he gave up trying to sleep altogether. 

Instead he would stare in the mirror endlessly, until the dawn filtered in stubbornly through heavy curtains. He studied how his face flinched when he thought of her. Hot tears spilled from bloodshot eyes, rolling down weathered cheeks that were becoming more and more scattered with the beginnings of an unkempt beard.

Almost as if he was trying to memorize the mechanics that made him human.

Weeks passed by, smoothly as the liquor he swallowed in hurried gasps night after night. Amber droplets dribbled pathetically from his chin and desperation for unconsciousness sat heavy on his tongue. After a while, the brandy didn’t burn anymore. The markers on the bottle became his clock. And time still couldn't pass quick enough. 

He spent what he thought were days dodging the shadowy corners of his empty mansion, his face cellophane with fear every time he even dared to venture from his bed. Migraines plagued him, bleary visions of smudged charcoal lines on tainted paper threatening to send him toppling down the grand oak staircase. 

Sometimes, in his delirium, he would hang his feet over the steps. Just for a second. Or maybe a minute. Maybe two. He held his breath as he teetered on the edge, almost too ready to rearrange his bones in a misshapen, hellbent heap; a crooked pile of despair for the servants to find weeks later, his perfect flesh beginning to rot into the luxurious Persian carpets. 

Of course they’d have to be thrown out afterwards. The smell would never wash out. 

But he always pulled himself back- thank God - just when he could hear the whiny whispers of society wives ringing in his ears. He imagined them mourning him, rehashing old rumors over tea and cakes, prattling on and on about what a despicable, horrid, scandalous tragedy it all was. 

He didn’t need their damn pity. He didn’t need anything. 

A real man makes his own luck. 

He didn’t attend the funeral. He knew the coffin would be empty anyways. None of it would have mattered. He scoffed at the thought. Who was he kidding? Appearances were everything in their world. 

The date in the corner of the newspaper which lay crumpled on the floor, decaying from a surprisingly manic moment of rage, taunted him. Today would’ve been his wedding day. 

A sharp, cruel chuckle brambled between his lips at the fact. It was utterly depressing. 

But then again, what was he?

He already knew he was a coward, running from his inevitable vulnerability, thinking he could hide from the guilt that would eventually consume him.

He could feel it sneaking up on him sometimes in the darkness. Auburn curls twisting themselves around his arms, violent memories of a certain girl with a porcelain smile threatening to suffocate him when he closed his eyes for a moment too long, when he ran out of alcohol to keep the cold from creeping into his bones… 

The sting of ocean salt burned his nostrils. The ring of a gunshot echoed in his mind. 

At the end of it all, he had only sent off a letter to Ruth, sloppily expressing his deepest condolences, the words crooked and warped with tear-stains. Naturally, there was also a check inside - hopefully large enough to rid her of him forever. 

He smirked to himself, knowing he would never be, not really. 

After that, he wanted to give up. He wanted to hide forever. He wanted to waste away in his cold, dark cave, littered with empty liquor bottles and cigarette ashes, becoming one of the ghosts he was so desperately trying to run from, watching with dark eyes as the society pages printed story after story, lie after lie, tarnishing his sterling silver reputation. One that he had spent so many years polishing. 

And for what? Why had he worked so hard? 

Rose had seen right through it all, the steel that he had carefully wrapped around his heart nothing more than a corroded puddle with the words she had spat at him that one last time. 

I’d rather be his whore than your wife. 

She never wanted any of it. Lavish gifts, trips to Europe, diamonds... 

He cringed. A drawing flashed before him. 

Why couldn’t he have seen that? Why couldn’t he have seen that it was so painfully obvious that she had wanted something more?

Asking was pointless. He knew the answer. 

He knew that, deep down, he had had nothing else to offer her. 

His pride had always been a problem. 

You unimaginable bastard.

Sometimes he had caught a glimpse of himself, perhaps in the mirror of some grand ballroom, and he wanted to cry. He would see himself caught up in a conversation with men the same age as his father, parading their almost childlike wives around like trophies. He would grin brilliantly at what they said, throw his head back, laughing brashly at some lackluster thought. 

He wanted to know how he had ended up like that… Arrogant, shallow, so disgustingly obnoxious… 

He had tried to run once, back in the days when there was more to learn, broken bones and black eyes waiting for him when he faltered. 

He had, simply, always been too weak. 

He thought that maybe she would have fixed that, fixed him. That maybe-

There had been lots of maybes. 

Cal would never admit it but he had envied Jack Dawson. He envied that Rose’s beauty had been immortalized in him. Her face, her smile, branded in the back of his eyelids as they had closed one final time.

And he? He had nothing. All he could remember was the sharp blast of a gunshot and a target he would never hit no matter how hard he tried. And he didn’t even want to remember that. 

There had been something in Rose that he had lost within himself. And now he would never get it back. 

He poured himself another shot. Then pointed the barrel at his temple. 

And now there was nothing left to lose.


End file.
